31 May 2014

In my search for engaging and motivating my students, I have found the website www.voki.com. Some people may not agree with the use of this tool with students, but the fact is that, if something works, then it is right. Instead of asking my students to write an ordinary composition describing their bedrooms so they can practice "There be" and the prepositions of place, I thought it could be different to do it in a different way. So I asked them to register in this site and create an avatar. Then they had to write ther description of their room in the text box that comes with the avatar. The fun of it is that they can make the avatar speak their written words so they not only write but also listen. Here are some examples of their work.

I
am teaching a very disruptive group of 12 year-old students. I have
tried many ways of keeping their attention and today I have found one,
the comic. I have taken them to the computer room and I have shown them a
site where they can create their own comic in English and send it to me.
It was really fun for them, and also for me when I could see their
faces laughing and smiling when working. For this activity I have used
the following site www.dvolver.com, but I am also posting here a presentation that will give you ideas on how yo use the comics in your class.

8 May 2013

As a teacher of English as a Second Language I want to thank all of you that, with your work, make cinema and television in English closer to those that are learning the language: subtitles maker. Thanks to you all I can encourage my students to start watching films and series in the original language. Spain is a country where we still add Spanish voices to the original dialogues. That makes people more difficult to get familiar to the original soundtrack. Our education authorities come with different ideas, all of them in the search of getting the right way for Spanish students to learn English more efficiently. None of them are proving to be right.
We start the learning of language at 5. The fact is that my 12 years old don't know much English. It is not about creating new education laws, it is about changing the reality of how foreign languages are introduced in our country. And lets face it, television is the most powerful tool. We already know that in countries where they use original languages on television, children get familiar with foreign languages the same way they get familiar with their own. That is why, for example, in Holland, for children to be able to speak in English is quite normal.
So, now, for us teachers of English in Spain, it is a hard task to encourage our students to watch films in English. And this is the reason why we have to thank subtitles makers their task. They have become a really good help to us. Thanks again.

Copyright

All downloadble material has copyright. You are free to use it in your class.

HOW TO DOWNLOAD FILES.

There are two ways of downloading my files.Just click on the download button if there is one or use the My Shared Files gadget with links to all the files. You can see it on the right, below. Just click on the one you like and it will download inmediately.